A few months ago I had a strange hard drive problem. My Seagate hard drive (ST325031 – the SATA 250G) started to make a strange noise. It was like it was trying to spin up for a few seconds, then it would stop, then it would try again, and stop, over and over. After a short period the computer would either freeze completely or it would automatically reboot.
It was obvious that I was having a problem with my hard drive so I began trying to figure out what it was. The first thing I did was burn the SeaTools for DOS iso onto a CD and boot from it. This is a special diagnostic utility from Seagate which can test your hard drive. I ran the short and long test and my hard drive had no errors. This was good and bad news. The good news was that I knew my hard drive itself was fine, but the bad news was that I had some other mysterious problem affecting the performance of the hard drive.
My system has a second identical hard drive (another ST325031). The computer would still work sporadically for short periods of time (before the hard drive would have a problem), so I decided to try getting all of my data on to the primary drive and then use the Seagate tool, DiscWizard, to clone the hard drive to my second hard drive.
After the cloning process successfully completed I completely unhooked my primary hard drive and began using the second hard drive as the primary drive. The clone process clones all of the data (including the OS and boot information) and allows you to start using the cloned drive just like it was the original drive. My computer worked normally for a short period of time but after a few hours my second hard drive began exhibiting the exact same symptoms.
It’s strange to have two separate hard drives both fail in the same way at the same time. It points to the error being with something other than the hard drives. I ran the SeaTools check on the second hard drive just to make sure it had no errors. At that point I was at a loss for what my problem could be. My system had been running fine with the exact same hardware configuration for about 7 months.
I did some searching on the internet and saw a few pages where people said their hard drive problem was due to a weak power supply. Basically the power supply wasn’t putting out enough power for the hard drive to function properly. After reading that I thought it could possibly be my problem because the hard drive would work for a period of time and then it would start making the weird noise (like it was trying to spin up or something) and then it would stall and hang.
I wasn’t convinced this was my problem because my system had been running fine for many months with the same hardware setup (same power supply, same everything – I hadn’t added anything new). To test this possibility I disconnected every non-essential piece of hardware and just had one hard drive connected (e.g. I disconnected my dvd-drive and additional case fans). The computer ran fine and the problem didn’t occur so I decided I would go buy a new, larger power supply. I upgraded from a 450 watt to a 550 watt power supply. I reconnected everything and I haven’t had the problem since. So the hard drive problem I experienced was related to the power supply.
It’s strange the problem started after the system had been running fine for about 7 months. I guess the power supply wasn’t performing as well as it used to. Power supplies can be the source of many hardware problems, so you always need to consider that possibility.
December 23rd, 2010 at 10:23 am
My friend: I was about to assume that my ST325031 hard drive was dead (mechanical issues, I supposed) and that I had lost all my files when I gave Google a try… when I found your site. Thank you very much for sharing your research with the Internet! I was having the exact same symptoms: two hard drives -although they were different- and suddenly, after years of use, the second one (the ST325031) began to make some strange noises and to not work properly (no access to files and O.S. freezing), although my O.S. seemed to detecte the hard drive correctly. So I disconnected every other important device (the primary hard drive and the two DVD readers), rebooted with a system disk and… no more strange noise; there they were my files!
Thank you once again. For sure I’ll be buying a new PSU tomorrow in the morning…
December 23rd, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Jacobo, thanks for sharing about your experience and I’m glad I could be of some help! My guess is that power supply problems occur more often than people realize.
In my current computer I decided to spend more and get a nice name-brand power supply. I didn’t get as many watts as I could with a cheap no-name brand, but I decided I would rather have a 550 watt unit from a reputable company. I’ve heard people say that for a no-name brand power supply you need to subtract 100 watts and figure that’s what the power supply will actually perform as. So if you’re buying a cheap 650 watt unit, it may perform the same as a nice 550 watt power supply.